Posted by nmsindy on 14th September 2007
I found this fairly straightforward. Solving time: 15 mins.
(LATER: there is a Nina here that I missed though I did look, but another has pointed it out. I refer to it after the clue explanations.)
* = anagram
ACROSS
1 LECTIONARY (not clear I)* y = last of early A book of church lessons for each day.
6 JAVA First letters, indicated by “initially”
10 GA(E)L DO M Do = party M = male
11 S (TERN) UM
12 CO (PART) NE R
13 VAL(V)E depression = valley = vale
14 F (RAN) C ‘No longer’ as franc has been replaced as French currency by the euro.
15 EDELWEISS (lies weeds)*
21 GAFFE(r)
25 TRANC (H) E
26 Bertie WOOS TER(m)
27 (b)RAKE Reasonably obscure form of transport
28 S(T)AN DER (S) - BY San = Sanitorium = hospital
DOWN
2 C HEAP JACK
7 ANNU (a) L annual is last word in last clue (24 down)
9 LEAVE WELL ALONE Liked that - cryptic definition of phrase.
19 TH (ROW) - IN Wondered about ‘pause’ as a definition - I imagined the physio coming on, then light dawned.
22 FL (abbrev) ASK
24 (y)EARLY unknowns from equations can be x, y or z
Theme: look in row 6, cf 26 across!
Posted in Independent | 5 Comments »
Posted by neildubya on 14th September 2007
This was probably one of the easiest advanced puzzles I’ve ever completed but it was a very satisfying solve. I only needed Chambers on a couple of occasions and there were some great new words to learn (FISTIANA,MEIOFAUNA). Still not sure about the wordplay for 19D though.
| Across |
| 4 |
(IT IS)* in FAN,A - what a great word FISTIANA is. |
| 10 |
(PERSON)* in CORDED |
| 11 |
ART in LINE< - the deception in this clue comes from the capitalized R in Ravel, leading you down a musical garden-path. |
| 13 |
DAM in A SWINE - ADAM’S WINE. This clue illustrates something that has always puzzled about advanced cryptics: why are answers of more than one word never fully enumerated? For this clue, we get (9, two words) instead of (5,4). Anyone know why this is? |
| 18 |
A,T in IN TIME - tough clue to parse and it took me a while to twig that “eventually” was IN TIME. |
| 20 |
GIS[t] in E,LETS. |
| 21 |
A in I,FAN - NAAFI. I wouldn’t have known this word were it not for the Times puzzle in which it appeared a couple of weeks ago. It’s an abbreviation which stands for “Navy,Army and Air Force Institutes”. |
| 25 |
EVE in A,G,GRID - unusually, a less than convincing surface reading for this setter. |
| 28 |
(CERTAIN ROUND)* - COUNTERDRAIN. “Barking” is the anagram indicator here and I assume it’s in the sense of mad or crazy. |
| 29 |
AN,Z,A,CD,A,Y - lots of elements to put together here. |
| |
| Down |
| 1 |
(IN A CANOE)* - OCEANIA. |
| 2 |
CON,DEN,(AS INTO)* - CONDENSATION. |
| 7 |
ADS,ORBS - not to be confused with “absorb”. |
| 14 |
(ANIMALCULES OAF [-calls])* - we only see this type of anagram in advanced cryptics, and even there it’s quite rare I think. The idea is that “calls MEIOFAUNA” is an anagram of “Animalcules oaf”. |
| 15 |
M[-is]ALIGNED - “true” is used in the something being in the correct position. |
| 19 |
THAMMUZ - can’t work out the wordplay for this one. The full clue is “Representation of sun in the morning - endless blur”. “Morning” could be AM but I don’t know about the rest. |
| 22 |
KIND[-l]Y |
| 24 |
OR,C[atace]A |
Posted in Beelzebub | 2 Comments »
Posted by neildubya on 14th September 2007
| Across |
| 1 |
(PTA I CURB SCHOOL)* - CLAUSTROPHOBIC. Easy anagram to spot; it’s always nice to get a long answer quickly as it gives you lots of Down clues to work on. |
| 10 |
POLE,V[-i]NE (all reversed) |
| 11 |
(LONE)* in FRY - “criminal” is just begging to be the anagrind here. |
| 13 |
(LIAR SUN)* in JOT - JOURNALIST. But where’s the definition? The full clue is “Liar Sun moves in to write quickly” and that doesn’t look like an &lit to me. |
| 15 |
I,A in (RETURN)* - ETRURIAN. |
| 18 |
S[hort]T,ROBE |
| 20 |
A,RARE,MED (all reversed) - DEMERARA was just sugar to me to I had to check the colony reference. |
| 23 |
PO,IS in ANG LEE - couple of pop culture refs here. PO is one of the Teletubbies (along with Tinky-Winky, Dipsy and Laa-Laa) and ANG LEE directed, amongst others, “Brokeback Mountain”. |
| 26 |
ILL,[y]OGIC - picking out “of certain exercises” is the tricky bit here. |
| 27 |
hidden in “bORG AN ICeborg” and in “icebORG A NICkname” - I was just about to type something along the lines of “I’m not sure what “A nickname repeatedly” means…” but then I spotted the second hidden word. Cleverly done, but I’m not sure what the point is of having it twice. |
| |
| Down |
| 2 |
LEVELER - misleading cryptic definition. I think that “on Broadway” must refer the American spelling of “leveller”. |
| 3 |
U[nendin]G, L[echer]Y - nice to see this word clued using something other that the old UGLI/UGLY gag. |
| 4 |
IOC in TAPAS |
| 5 |
DR,OF,XO (all going up) - excellent &lit. I especially liked “elementary game symbols” for XO (noughts and crosses). |
| 6 |
HAL,FADO,ZEN - another really good clue. I didn’t know about FADO (Portuguese folk music) but with HAL and ZEN and (4,1,5) it’s easy to fill in the gaps. |
| 8 |
STALL,ATTIC in CRY,E - very tough clue to parse and “particular arrangement” is not an obvious definition. |
| 9 |
WE,(MY TEAM BUILDS)* - another excellent clue. |
| 14 |
ARABLE,AGUE |
| 21 |
ALMA,NAC (”knack”) - “Miss Cogan” is a dead giveaway, making this one of the easier clues in the puzzle. |
| 22 |
X,C in BOAR - I did wonder what hobos had to do with BOXCARs but the Wikipedia entry (yes, even boxcars are in Wikipedia) says that they were favoured by hobos because they were enclosed and therefore warm and out of sight of railroad security men. |
| 25 |
hidden in “vAGRAnts”. |
Posted in Independent | 1 Comment »
Posted by Simply_Simon on 14th September 2007
I enjoyed this crossword, which was on the whole straightforward but with interesting nuggets of information - 8 AC, and some amusing clues - 18Dn.
Posted by Simply Simon Peters
Across
7 LONG JOHN is obviously half of a pair of warmers – Longjohns are an undergarment which is like a babygrow for adults, minus coverings for the hands and feet. I can see that Long goes together with Short (23 Ac) – but is there more to it than that?
9 BRONTE anagram, but also The three sisters wrote under pseudonyms of Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte) Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte) and Acton Bell (Anne Bronte) to disguise their femininity and to get their works into print.
11 TEN ANTS HIP
12, 25, 16 THETA Y BRIDGE DISASTER Theta is the 8th letter of the Greek alphabet, Bridge is a card game, Y is the end of every, Dis is the lower city of hell, and an Aster is a flower. The Tay Bridge Disaster happened in 1879.
15 WEIR DO
17 ANANAS, this held me up because I couldn’t get the significance of ‘darling’, then I recalled that the Darling Family in Peter Pan had a dog, called Nana. Ananas is the Genus name for the Pineapple.
20 RHODESIA – anagram of hero aids.
22 BRECHT ‘B’ is the second letter, and the German for right is recht.
23 CLARE SHOR T – claret around ‘sh’ and or, for golden.
24, 14 RUBY WEDDINGS anagram of Burns we giddy, and is the celebration of 40 years of marriage.
26 TREASURE – being part of cenTRE on ‘A SURE’ (certain).
Down
1 FORESHOW – ‘how’ following (succeeding) an abbreviated forest, meaning to predict.
3 WORTHY – an inverted row on top of thy – the possessive of the solver, thou.
4 A BING D O N the lottery is Bingo, the number is D – Roman 500, N is new, Abingdon is on the Thames.
5 CON SCIENCE
6 ST RING
8 NONE EWS – No news is good news, or so they say.
13 THIRD GRADE – Lew and Leslie Grade were impresarios, and Michael is the son of Leslie, and nephew of Lew.
18 SCHUBERT – is Chub, a fish ‘in sert’. The Trout Quintet is the popular name for the Piano Quintet in A by Franz Schubert. “In sert” made me laugh.
19 PAY OUT – the boy or girls is PAT and YOU are the solver (hopefully).
22 HILARY – the monster reported is the Gila Monster which is a venomous lizard, and RY is an abbreviation of railway, for line. Hilary is a name for either boys or girls.
Posted in Guardian | 6 Comments »